In the Country of Others

by Leïla Slimani

  Mourad would be out with his machines from dawn until dusk and he didn’t even leave the fields to eat lunch. The laborers didn’t want to eat with him, so he sat alone in the shade of a tree, chewing his bread and staring at the ground so he wouldn’t see the taunting eyes of his men.

  In the days after he started working at the farm, Mourad set about solving the water problem. With an old Pontiac engine he created a pump house. He hired a few men to drill for water. When it started spurting out of the earth the workers yelled with joy. They held their callused hands under the jet, splashed the cool water over their wind-burned faces and thanked God for His generosity. But Mourad was not as magnanimous as Allah. At night he organized “water guards” to protect the well. Two trusted workers took turns standing in front of the hole with rifles on their shoulders. They’d light a fire to keep the dogs and jackals away and fight to stay awake until the changing of the guard.

  * * *

  —

  Mourad wanted Amine to be happy and proud of him. He didn’t care if the laborers hated him; his only obsession was satisfying his commander. Every day, Amine delegated more and more tasks to Mourad, devoting himself to his experiments and numerous meetings with the bank. He was often absent, leaving Mourad in despair. When he’d accepted this job, Mourad had imagined being as close to Amine as he’d been during the war, the two of them enjoying the country air, walking for hours, confronting danger together, and laughing, as men do, at stupid jokes. He’d thought that their old complicity would return and that—despite the permanently hierarchical nature of their relationship—they would be the best of friends again, a friendship that would exclude Mathilde, the laborers, and even Amine’s children.

  He felt a surge of joy when, in the middle of December, Amine offered to help him repair the combine harvester. They spent three afternoons in the hangar together. Amine was surprised by Mourad’s enthusiasm, the way he whistled cheerfully as he hoisted himself up onto the enormous machine. Mourad had always been the one to repair tanks during the war. One evening, his face smeared with grease, his hands shaking with fatigue and frustration, Amine threw a tool at the wall, furious at having wasted his time and money on this machine. He was missing certain parts and no mechanic in the region could supply him with them. “Let’s just forget it. I’m going home.” But Mourad stopped him and, in a loud, comical voice, encouraged Amine to be brave and optimistic. He was convinced that he could manufacture the missing parts himself, and he said that if it would genuinely help make the harvester work again he would gladly cut off one of his legs or arms. This made Amine laugh, and back then Amine didn’t laugh very often.

  * * *

  —

  Amine was delighted by his foreman’s efficiency but he worried about the oppressive atmosphere created by his military methods. The laborers would often come to him to complain. Mourad was always insulting the nationalists and the men had seen him walking on the main road, his little finger entwined with the little finger of the moqaddem, the local government’s chief of intelligence. The foreman boasted about being an agent of order and prosperity. When Amine became concerned about the fighting that was breaking out more and more often on the farm, when he expressed regret at seeing the sad, angry expressions on the peasants’ faces, Mourad reassured him: “This is not the moment to be weak. All over the country young people are creating disorder. We have to be firm with them.”

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” Mathilde admitted one day. She felt oppressed by Mourad’s presence during family meals, including—Amine insisted—on Sundays. She thought he looked like a vulture with his wide, sloping shoulders, his beak-like nose, and his scavenger’s solitude, and Amine, for once, didn’t contradict her. Mourad talked in metaphors of war and often Amine had to reprimand him. “Don’t say that kind of thing in front of the children. Can’t you see that you’re scaring them?” For the foreman, everything was a question of honor and duty, and all the stories he told were about battles. Amine felt bad for his aide-de-camp, trapped in the past like an insect in amber, held in a state of eternal suspension. Behind Mourad’s arrogance he could detect his awkwardness, and one evening, as they were returning from the fields together, he said: “I want you to eat Christmas dinner with us. It’s an important day for Mathilde.” He wanted to add “No talking about France or the war,” but he didn’t dare.

  * * *

  Mathilde invited the Palosis to spend Christmas with them, and Corinne joyfully accepted. “Christmas without children is so sad, don’t you think?” she said to Dragan, who felt his heart contract. Corinne didn’t think he could understand how it felt not to be a mother. She imagined that her grief was inaccessible to him and, more generally, that men knew nothing of such private sufferings. Corinne was wrong. One day, when he was still a child living in Budapest, little Dragan had put on one of his sister Tamara’s dresses. The little girl had laughed until she almost peed herself, crying out, “You’re so pretty! You’re so pretty!” When he found out about this, Dragan’s father had grown angry and punished his son. He’d warned him not to play such perverted games, arguing that they were the start of a slippery slope and that he should stay well away from them. Thinking about this later, Dragan believed that it was at this moment that his fascination for women was formed. He’d never wanted to possess them, or even be like them; what overwhelmed him was that magic power of theirs, the belly that swelled like his mother’s had. He didn’t tell his father this, though. In fact he didn’t even tell his professor of medicine when the man balefully asked him why he wished to be a gynecologist. Instead he replied simply: “Because women will always have babies.”

  Dragan loved children and they felt the same way toward him. Aïcha adored the doctor, who would wink as he slipped mints or licorices into her palm. She was grateful less for the sweets than for the shared secret, because she had the impression that she was important to him. He intrigued her too, with his strange accent and his frequent references to an “iron curtain” behind which he wanted to send oranges and—one day, perhaps—apricots. Mathilde had said that at Christmas he’d be bringing his sister, Tamara, who lived behind that iron curtain, and Aïcha imagined this woman standing behind a big metal shutter, like the one that the grocer Soussi would close every evening to protect his shop. How strange, Aïcha thought. Why would anyone want to live like that?

  * * *

  The Palosis were the last guests to arrive on Christmas Eve, and Aïcha watched them from behind her mother’s legs. Tamara appeared: her complexion was yellowish and the little hair she had was pulled into a sort of bun on the side, a hairstyle that had been fashionable in the 1930s. Her face was dominated by a pair of bulging eyes, softened by long white lashes, which gave the impression that she was staring deeply into the past, magnetized by sad memories. She was like a child trapped on a merry-go-round. Selim was so scared of her that he didn’t want to let her kiss his cheek. She wore an old-fashioned dress whose sleeves and collar had been darned many times. But her neck and her earlobes were decorated with beautiful jewelry that immediately drew Mathilde’s gaze. The necklace and earrings were heirlooms from a distant time, a lost world, and Mathilde was so impressed by them that she treated Tamara as a special guest.

  As soon as they arrived the house filled with laughter and exclamations of surprise. Everyone complimented Corinne on her outfit, a flared dress that revealed her ankles and showed so much décolletage that the men were hypnotized. Even the Mercier widow, who had twisted her ankle and was sitting under the living room window, told Corinne how elegant she looked. Dragan played Santa Claus that evening. He asked Tamo and Amine to help him empty the trunk of his car, and when they entered the living room, their arms filled with packages, Mathilde rushed over to them. Aïcha watched her mother throw herself to the floor and thought: Mama is a child too. “Thank you, thank you!” Mathilde kept saying as she unwrapped the bottles of Hungarian Tokay that Dragan had managed to unearth. He opened one
of the bottles there and then. “It’ll bring back memories of late grape harvests in Alsace,” he promised her, pouring the golden liquid into a glass that he sniffed ceremoniously. “Now open this box!” Mathilde tore off the string and inside the box she found a panoply of medicines, medical equipment, and medical books. She picked up one of the books and held it to her chest. “That one’s in French!” Dragan exclaimed, raising his glass and toasting the children’s health and the joy of being together.

  Before dinner Tamara agreed to sing for her hosts. In her youth she had enjoyed fleeting fame as a singer and had performed in Prague, Vienna, and in Germany, next to a lake whose name she’d forgotten. She stood in front of the large window, placed one hand on her belly and pointed the other toward the horizon. From her skinny torso emerged a powerful voice, and the precious stones around her neck seemed to vibrate. Her song was desperately sad, like the lament of a siren or some strange animal exiled on earth that was calling out to its lost loved ones. Tamo, who had never heard anything like it before, ran into the living room. Mathilde had again forced her to wear a black-and-white maid’s uniform and a small pleated headdress. She smelled of sweat and her frilly apron was stained where she’d wiped her fingers, despite Mathilde’s constant reminder that it was not a tea towel. The maid stared, dumbstruck, at the singer, and Mathilde hurried her back into the kitchen before she had time to start laughing or to say something stupid. Aïcha clung to her father. There was beauty in that song, perhaps even a certain magic, but all Amine’s emotions were strangled by a terrible feeling of embarrassment. The spectacle of this old lady singing filled him with shame and he had no idea why.

  * * *

  —

  After dinner the men went out onto the front steps to smoke. It was a clear night and they could make out the obscene shape of the cypresses against the purple sky. Amine was a little drunk and he felt happy, standing there on the steps, outside his house filled with guests. I’m a man, he thought, I’m a father, I possess things. He let his mind drift into a strange, floating reverie. Through the window he could see the living room mirror reflecting the figures of his wife and children. He turned toward the garden and felt a sense of friendship toward the men around him that was so deep, so vivid, that he had a sudden idiotic urge to hug them. Dragan, who was expecting his first orange harvest that spring, told them that he’d probably found a distributor, that they were close to signing a contract. The effects of the alcohol made it difficult for Amine to concentrate; his ideas flew away from him like dandelion seeds. He didn’t notice that Mourad too was drunk and that he was struggling to stay upright. The foreman grabbed Omar’s arm and spoke to him in Arabic. “He’s a pussy,” he said, gesturing at Dragan, and when he laughed, saliva squirted between his missing teeth. He was envious of the Hungarian’s elegance, jealous of Amine’s attentiveness toward him, and he felt ridiculous in his frayed shirt and the jacket that Mathilde had given him, less out of generosity than fear of being shamed by him in front of all these foreign guests.

  Omar was repulsed by the former soldier. He wiped the saliva from his neck and rolled his eyes as Mourad began one of his interminable stories about the war. All the men lowered their heads. Neither the Jew nor the Muslim nor any of those who had been through those years of shame and betrayal wished to see the evening ruined by such stories. Mourad, his gaze wavering, started talking about his years in Indochina and the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. “Communist bastards!” he yelled, and Dragan looked back inside the house, seeking a woman’s eyes. Abruptly, Omar freed himself from Mourad’s grip and the foreman lost his balance and collapsed on to the ground.

  “Dien Bien Phu! Dien Bien Phu!” Omar repeated, hopping about, his mouth contracted with rage. He bent down, grabbed Mourad by the collar and spat in his face. “You filthy sellout! You stupid soldier—you were exploited by the French. You’re a traitor to Islam, a traitor to your country.” Mourad had cut his head when he fell, and Dragan crouched down to examine the wound. Amine, suddenly sober, went over to his brother and—even before trying to reason with him—was paralyzed by Omar’s myopic glare. “I’m out of here. I don’t know what I’m doing in this house of degenerates, celebrating a god that isn’t even mine. You should be ashamed of yourself, in front of your children and your workers. You should be ashamed of the contempt you show your people. You ought to watch yourself. Traitors will get what’s coming to them when we take over the country.” Omar turned his back and walked away into the night, his slender figure gradually disappearing as if being absorbed by the landscape.

  The women had heard the shouting and become alarmed when they saw Mourad lying on the ground. Corinne ran toward them and—despite his anger, despite his pain—Amine couldn’t help laughing when he saw her. Her breasts were so huge that she ran in a funny way, back straight and chin out, skipping like a mountain goat. Dragan patted his host on the shoulder and said something to him in Hungarian that meant: “Don’t let this spoil the party. Let’s drink!”

  VII

  Omar did not reappear. A week passed, then a month, and there was still no sign of him.

  One morning Yasmine found two baskets full of food outside the hobnailed door. They were so heavy that she had to drag them along the floor to the kitchen, where she yelled for Mouilala to come and see. “Two chickens, some eggs, and broad beans. Look at those tomatoes, and that sachet of saffron!” Mouilala angrily hit the old slave. “Put it all away! You hear me? Put it away!” Her withered face was wet with tears and she was shaking. Mouilala knew that the nationalists gave baskets of food and sometimes even money to the families of martyrs and prisoners. “Idiot! Imbecile! Don’t you understand? This means something has happened to my son!”

  When Amine came to visit, the old woman was sitting on the patio, and for the first time he saw her hair, long, coarse, and gray, falling down her back. She stood up in a fury and stared at him with hate.

  “Where is he? He hasn’t been home for a month! May the Prophet protect him! Don’t keep things from me, Amine. If you know anything, if anything’s happened to my son, tell me, I beg you!” Mouilala had not slept for days. Her face was drawn and she’d lost weight.

  “I’m not hiding anything. Why are you accusing me? Omar’s been hanging around with a gang of rebels for months. He’s the one putting our family’s safety at risk. Why blame me for it?”

  Mouilala started to weep. This was the first time she’d ever had a row with Amine.

  “Find him, ya ouldi. Find your brother. Bring him home.” Amine kissed his mother’s forehead, he rubbed her hands, and he promised.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll bring him to you. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.”

  In truth Amine had been tortured by Omar’s absence. For weeks he’d knocked at the houses of neighbors, family friends, his few contacts in the army. He’d gone to the cafés where his brother was often seen, he’d spent whole afternoons sitting outside the bus station, watching buses leave for Tangier and Casablanca. Sometimes he would see a man whose silhouette or gait reminded him of his brother and he’d jump up and run after him, pat him on the shoulder, and when the stranger turned to face him he’d say: “I beg your pardon, monsieur. I thought you were someone else.”

  * * *

  —

  He remembered Omar often talking about Otmane, a former schoolmate from Fez, so he decided to pay him a visit. It was early afternoon when he reached the heights of the holy city and entered the damp backstreets of the medina. A sad, cold February day, its murky light spread over the green fields and splendid mosques of the imperial city. Amine kept asking the way from passersby; they were all shivering, all in a rush, but each one gave him different directions and after two hours of turning in circles he started to panic. He kept having to press his body to the walls to let a donkey or a cart go past. “Balak, balak!” men would yell—“Get out of the way!”—and Amine would jump, his shirt soaked with sweat despite the coolness of
the air. At last an old man with discolored patches on his face came up to him and, in a gentle voice, rolling his Rs, offered to escort him to the house. They walked in silence, Amine following in the footsteps of this distinguished man who was greeted by everyone they passed. “It’s here,” the stranger said, gesturing to a door then vanishing into an alleyway before Amine could thank him.

  A young maid opened the door and escorted him to a ground-floor courtyard. He waited for a long time in this empty, silent riad. Several times he stood up and cautiously walked around the central patio. He peeked through half-open doors, stamping his feet on the zellige and hoping that the inhabitants—who were perhaps asleep at this mid-afternoon hour—would be woken by the noise. The riad was vast and decorated with exquisite taste. Across from the fountain was a large room with a mahogany desk and two sofas upholstered with precious fabrics. Fragrant jasmine grew on the patio, as well as a wisteria that climbed up to the first-floor balustrades. To the right of the entrance the walls of the Moroccan living room were decorated with plaster sculptures and the cedar ceiling covered in colored patterns.

  Amine was about to leave when the door opened and a man came in. He wore a striped djellaba and a fez. His beard was neatly trimmed and under his arm he held a red leather folder containing a stack of files. The man frowned with surprise at the sight of this stranger in his house.